


A Matter of Raffles and Death

by unwillingadventurer



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28955223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwillingadventurer/pseuds/unwillingadventurer
Summary: An angel is sent to take Raffles to heaven.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Lovingly inspired by the wonderful film 'A Matter of Life and Death'. This was originally written in three parts for separate Crime and Christmas prompts.

Looking down from heaven at the earth of Christmas past I watched in glee at the two beloved human creatures named A.J Raffles and Bunny Manders who were celebrating Christmas in a clip from two years prior— and they were magnificent. I watched them many times before that but now I had a real reason to do so, a mission as it were. They sat together by a roaring fire and exchanged presents that were wrapped in paper and tied with brown string. I’d had a friend like that once, a splendid fellow, an artist, but he lived on Earth far longer than I, and one can’t quite remember how he perished. 

“I’d like to spend many more Christmases with you, A.J,” the young man, Bunny said. He was a writer like me and a good one at that, but dare I say he quite lacked my flamboyance and whimsy? 

“As many as you like, my dear fellow.”

That part stung in my heart like a bee. It was an important mission I’d been entrusted with but why did my mission have to be making sure that A.J Raffles died when he was supposed to? If it were up to me, we’d all live to ninety years old and be done with it. None of all this faffing about. As I continued to watch those adorable creatures falling asleep in each other’s arms, I too closed my weary eyes and surrendered myself to blissful silence.

I was dozing quite peacefully as one expects to when one is an angel in heaven and has been there for a couple of hundred years or so with little to do to pass the time of eternity. You’d think one would be able to sleep in peace but one rarely does even in paradise.

“Simon?” A voice called and I woke up to find one of my colleagues standing beside me, a woman who had been some kind of nurse on Earth in her living days. “You’re meant to be checking on the life and past of A.J Raffles. He’s due to arrive anytime and we’re not certain on his credentials to allow passage to our heavenly gates.”

I glanced down at the giant glass dome in front of me which looked upon the Earth and all who lived and breathed there. “I’m getting to it.” I glanced down. “Oh dear.”

“What is it, Simon?”

“It’s ‘Sir Simon’.”

“You were never knighted.”

“I was, just got it taken away briefly. I appear to have already liked this fellow in despite of his sins and have granted him permission to enter. He should be here momentarily.”

“Lost at sea, drowned wasn’t it?”

I clutched my heart. “Threw himself overboard in a daring escape. One has to admire it really. Except that he left his beloved behind.”

“Oh really Simon, getting caught up in mortals’ stories again! We already have people up here who probably shouldn’t be here without you letting anyone else in.”

“Ah.” I looked down at the machine. “I seem to have made a boo-boo.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not again!”

“It seems he’s…” I waved my hand in the air and grinned. “He’s…quite alive. Must’ve pressed the wrong button.”

“Simon! There’s nothing to be done but to send you to fix this. You go down there and you tell him he’s going to die and that he now has to prove his worth to get into heaven. It’s here or the other place.”

“He might prefer the other place.”

“Simon!”

I huffed and wiped my brow with a handkerchief before lifting my knee up and crossing my legs. “If I must. Though they say never to meet your heroes.”

“Just go, Simon.”

I was about to respond when I found myself on a warm beach with luscious yellow sand and wild crashing blue waves upon that desolate shore. And there he was…A.J Raffles, lying peacefully on the sand, his hair wet and his hands outstretched. I could see he was breathing and so prodded him.

“Wake up, Mr. Raffles, wake up, rise and shine. Thouest still alive.”

“What?” Raffles stirred and rolled over onto his back, staring up at me with dazzling blue eyes but a confused expression. “Who are you?”

“I’m Sir Simon de Winterbourne, pleased to make your acquaintance.” I took off my feathered hat and produced an extravagant bow.

“Who?”

“I would indeed have been famous if I hadn’t have perished tragically young. I was a playwright during the Elizabethan era, sought after and admired. Unfortunately, a young man I was staying with for Christmas, bestowed upon me not a gift but the plague and alas…” I mimed slitting my throat. “Well as they say I was no more.”

“By Jove, what on earth are you rambling about? Where’s Bunny?”

“Bunny is where you left him, on that boat, sailing to his incarceration. I must say I was rather saddened by that turn of events. But seeing as you are parted anyway, why don’t you come with me to the afterlife and be done with this place?”

He sat up groggily. “Are you a lunatic?”

“That was never proven. No, you’re meant to be dead, fellow. A.J Raffles was meant to die in the fathomless depths of the perilous ocean. But I made a tiny error and well here you are, alive and well on some Italian beach.” 

I could see him scanning the horizon. He smirked. “Well, if I’m alive, then I’m alive, it’s not my fault you couldn’t catch me.”

“I am not your Inspector Mackenzie. Thou must come with me. I’ll be in for it if thou does not.”

Raffles got to his feet. “You want me to voluntarily come with you to my doom? No thank you, old chap. It was a pleasure to meet you, but I’m quite happy here. I’ll find my way back to Bunny somehow.”

I started to breathe heavily. I was prone to panic attacks. “Oh lord. Thine eyes can see I’ll be in for a lashing.”

“Thine eyes can see you’re mad,” Raffles replied. “What if I refuse to die?”

“You can only cheat death once, Mr. Raffles, eventually it catches up with you.”

He folded his arms. “I don’t know why I’m talking to you, you’re probably a dream, but say this is true, why should you get to decide who lives and dies?”

“Goodness! I don’t, my dear man. I wanted you to live to ninety. The powers above are nagging away. ‘Kill this person’, ‘kill that person’, it’s all rather tedious. On Earth you have cricket, up there, death is our sporting event. I’ve got a wager on who will die first out of a ballet dancer and a scientist.”

Raffles smiled and I felt like Bunny Manders when he described him in his writing works. I had all his stories on my bookshelf. We were allowed spoilers of certain future events.  
“I’ll take things from here, Sir Simon,” Raffles said.

“But…but…what are you going to do?”

“I’ll live somehow and I’ll get back to Bunny. You don’t begrudge me that?”

“Well no, but what will I tell upstairs?”

“Tell them I’m not ready. Tell them life on Earth is still turning with A.J Raffles upon it.”

I sighed heavily and threw my cape across my shoulders. “It’ll be solitary confinement for me that’s what it’ll be. You think it’s only hell that offers eternal punishments but it’s not, they want us to suffer up there. Sadists.”

“So, I can stay?”

“I’m not sure how long for, but I promise I can at least let you find Bunny one day. I’ll hold them off until then but beware my precious Raffles, the hand of death will be upon your shoulder when you least expect it. Well maybe not least expect it as I’ll probably give you a warning but still.”

“Thank you.”

I spun around on the spot and found myself back in the viewing room in heaven where upon the screen, time had passed and Raffles was reunited with his Bunny. There they sat together on the roof of a building where Raffles’ hair had turned white. I admit I take credit for that. As I left him on the beach, I sprinkled some cloud dust onto his locks where they would gradually glow a beautiful white. He may not have been in heaven yet but there was no reason he shouldn’t look like heaven. We didn’t have Raffles just yet but we would soon. Surely a man couldn’t cheat death more than once? Surely soon this creature would grace our world above with his charming presence?

“Until we meet again, Mr. Raffles,” I said, pressing rewind on the viewing dome and watching as he walked across that Italian shore, barefoot in the sand, directionless and alone. My poor darling gentleman thief.


	2. Chapter 2

With a sharp intake of air, I let out a high-pitched sob beating my last shriek by an entire octave. I, Sir Simon de Winterbourne, dabbed thine eyes with a handkerchief as I watched the image of the wilting flower Raffles on my large screen in my Angel Halls of Residence. 

“It’s nearly time. It’s nearly time.” I jumped from my seat, gliding my way to the ornate mirror that graced one whole wall of my bathroom and was lit with twinkly lights. It wasn’t really a functional bathroom, there was no plumbing and my body couldn’t physically use the facilities but having been raised in a time as mine on Earth, in a manner one was not comfortable with, in a class a lot lower than I ever admitted, it was a luxury to have one’s own privy and so why not have a bathroom just to admire?

I wiped the tears away from thine eyes and was applying a subtle pink shade of lipstick when my superior, the formidable former matron, Anne-Marie, appeared beside me.

“Simon, I’ve been alerted via your documents that Raffles is about to die. You have planned for it this time, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have. My whole life I feel I’ve been preparing for this moment…well my whole death anyway.”

She folded her arms. “Well, could you go down there and prepare him then?”

“I’m powdering my nose.”

“You’re dead!”

“So will he be. No reason I can’t look fabulous just because I’m dead. Besides, I’m an angel. We’re meant to be the pretty ones.” I glanced at my boss. “Though that can’t always be the case.”

“Just go, Simon. And get it right this time. We want A. J Raffles in our waiting room ready for processing.”

“You don’t really think he’s cut out for heaven do you?” I grinned. “You just want him on the cricket team.”

Anne-Marie spun around. “Just get Raffles!”

…

When I arrived on Earth, under the grey sky, the streets were heaving with people and I spun into view, my colourful outfit whirling like a kaleidoscope. Such a shame that not a soul could see me resembling a peacock, ready to impress.

“Earl’s Court, here we are,” I said to myself as I floated up the stairs of Raffles’ building. “I courted an Earl once, didn’t go well.”

I swung open the door dramatically and saw the polished wooden coffin on the table. I clutched my heart, preparing myself to witness his typhoid-ridden corpse but when I opened the lid and peered inside, instead of a cold body there was a pile of books placed there. 

I picked one up. “Oscar Wilde?” I threw it aside, picked up another. “Chaucer?” I sorted through them as if I was at a library and I was flinging books around like I had more than two arms. “And none of my verse is ever in anybody’s coffin!”

I heard a grumble from the next room and I gasped as I noticed the rather limp body of A.J Raffles still lying on the bed. Drat! I’d arrived too early. He was merely dying, not departed. I really needed to work on my timings.

Swanning into the room, I sat on his bed and reclined back. “Hello there.”

He was groggy but his eyes were fixed on me with shock. “Not you! I thought I had imagined you.”

“No quite real. Raffles, I have come here for you. It is time.”

“Not time, you fool,” he managed to squeak though his eyes were rolling back into his head.

“We can’t possibly talk here. It’s so full of illness and it brings back the memories.” I let out a sob, covering my nose with a handkerchief which I whipped from my sleeve as though I were a magician. 

Raffles tried to protest but I clicked my fingers and when I did, we were now sitting on that long, grand staircase to heaven. Up it went further in the direction of the pearly gates, and down it could go to Earth and even further still if you kept downward, you could end up at the underground and you get that other place that we dare not mention, where the stairs are no longer pure white like piano keys but the colour of blood. Today we were stopping in the middle, in the purgatory platform, until he ‘officially’ succumbed to the illness. And there we sat on those moving steps, side by side, ready to reach the middle.

“You’ll forgive my taking you from Earth so quickly, Mr. Raffles, but I couldn’t bare to see you suffer.”

“You fool! I’m not yours to be taken! I’m not dying.”

“Denial, Raffles, is rather unattractive. I did the same on my death bed and as Hector nursed me, I said to him, ‘tis not my time’, but alas it was.”

“No, you’ve made a mistake. I was only faking my death,” Raffles insisted, staring around at the white fluffy clouds we passed as we made our ascent. “I say, heaven’s rather pretty if not bit of a bland colour palette.”

“They don’t like re-decorating here. And what do you mean you’re faking your death? You’re dying of typhoid, your coffin was ready, I’m just bringing you early.”

“Sir Simon, it’s a fake death. I’m trying to get rid of a woman.”

“Ah I see! Been there myself. But isn’t that a tiny bit extreme?”

“It was working a treat until you arrived.”

“But what about Bunny, I’ve been watching his poor little face? He thinks your ill, and you hadn’t told him of any plan.”

Raffles looked down. “It’s better he didn’t know. But I’ll tell him eventually.”

“Tell him? Raffles, I’m supposed to be taking you to be processed!”

“Well un-process me, I absolutely refuse to die before my time. What am I dying of? I haven’t actually got typhoid fever and I’m in perfect health!”

“Actually, you look rather clammy.”

“It’s a concoction Dr. Theobald put together.”

“So that scoundrel is in on it too. Life would be a lot easier if people didn’t pretend they were dying.” I placed my head in my hands. “Ah, what am I going to do? I told them you were arriving today. I promised I had it right this time. Anne-Marie was counting on me.”

“Who’s Anne-Marie?”

“Matron of the skies.”

“I’m sorry about that my dear fellow but you can’t take me up there now, I’ve got plans. Bunny and I have a cottage in Ham Common. My little Rabbit has secured it. Come with me, I’ll show it to you, have some tea, or something stronger like scotch whiskey?”

I flicked my hand in his direction. “Oh very well.”

And with a bow, a flash of my cape, we were standing outside the idyllic cottage in springtime with flowers in bloom and little lambs in the next field frolicking. It’d been so long since I’d had a frolic. I sighed. I spun on the spot again dreamily. Oh to be alive again.

“Isn’t it marvellous?” Raffles said. “I’ve not even really seen it.”

“Quite heavenly. But you’re showing me one side of this situation. What about poor Bunny standing at your graveside later, thinking you’ve perished? What about the fact that everyone will think you’re dead? How will that work?”

He placed his arm on my shoulder. “They already think I’m dead. It’s Mr. Maturin who’ll be no more and he’ll be missed by no one. Do keep up, Sir Simon. Can’t you just wave a wand and change the outcome. I mean, Raffles is already technically dead so nothing’s really changed has it?”

I stomped my foot! “Of all the cheek! Yes, it has, I’m supposed to be delivering you to Anne-Marie at four-fifteen.”

“I’m a person, Simon, not a package in the post.”

“Oh, we’re all packages. Some of us arrive a little worse for wear and some of us apparently…never arrive at all!”

“My dear chap, how you are like Bunny. Such a hot temperament. You must be cool, calm, collected. Approach those superiors of yours with confidence, elegance, determination and clearly state that it was all a mix up. Not your fault but A.J Raffles is not departing Earth yet and they’ll jolly well have to wait for me.”

“Fine.” I clicked my fingers and we were inside the cottage, he on the sofa and I atop the piano, stretching my leg upwards to see if were still as flexible as I once had been. “I always looked good in stockings.”

Raffles laughed. “Bunny does too.”

“Oh, I say, you’re making me quite blush.”

“Well, can I offer you a scotch whiskey, a Sullivan?”

“You can offer away as much as you like and I can accept but they mean nothing to me, I’m afraid. I’m an angel, I can’t consume earthly things, more’s the pity.”

“But you can touch things?”

“Yes, sometimes when it’s convenient.”

“Can’t you see how perfect it is here for me and Bunny? I don’t know how long it will last or what is to be in the future, but I have to try a little longer.” Raffles took a puff of his cigarette. “I’m not quite ready to shuffle off this mortal coil.”

“Pah, Shakespeare! ‘I’m so talented because I make up things’. I was robbed of my fame. I wasn’t allowed by some handsome angel to live on and on, cheating death at every opportunity. I had to suffer with boils, boils, Raffles. I had one on my…” I gasped. “At my groin.”

Raffles’ eyes widened and he tried not to look at the area concerned.

“Do you know I still get looks in heaven? Apparently, mine was not a heavenly body even though one does not bare the scars of death when one becomes an angel. However, the mental scars remain.”

“Then all the reason to let me not go through all that. Let me live longer. If not for my sake than for Bunny’s.”

“Oh Bunny, my Achilles heel. He is like my kin. I must protect him at all costs. Let us go to your funeral and see him.”

I waved my hat in the air and there we stood in that dark, grey, awful cemetery where the mourners were few and far between. We stood behind Bunny but he could not see us as we watched him standing over the grave, staring down as the soil was placed over the coffin. In black he looked as dark as his mood and his face was so pale, his eyes filled with tears. My heart went out to him. I slapped Raffles.

“You brute! No one should have to endure the death of the love of their life more than once.”

“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry to Bunny. But this was the only way it’d work. I didn’t want to spend my days as an invalid or as a common-law husband of Jacques.”

“Oh that dreadful painter woman? I was involved with an artist myself once, always ends in disaster.”

I watched for a moment as Raffles looked upon Bunny, observing as he sniffed, trying to suppress his tears. 

Raffles attempted to touch his shoulder but his hand went right through. He turned back to look at me. “I thought I was alive. I drunk the whiskey, I smoked, why can’t I touch him?”

“You’re in-between, Raffles, I’d commenced your departure.”

“No, you can’t!”

“Relax. You’re not dead yet. Only I can stamp the forms and process you.”

I snapped my fingers and suddenly we were inside the horse drawn carriage where we sat, squeezed in beside the real Raffles and Bunny, the Raffles who was in disguise to capture Bunny. 

“This is rather confusing,” I said watching as the real ghostly Raffles stared at his own face. 

“But I haven’t done this yet.”

“It’s a glimpse of what is to be.”

“Like Scrooge being shown what is to come?”

“Not that drastic, we still have another part of the story later. This is a glimpse of your immediate future.”

“What immediate future, I thought I was being taken now?”

“Oh hush. I needed to fast-forward a bit, see what happens and now that I have, I can’t possibly take you to heaven yet. You’re not ready, like an underdone steak, all pink and disgusting.”

“So I can stay?”

I froze the scene so that only I and heavenly Raffles could move. The real Raffles and Bunny sat there motionless as did the world around them. Horses still, people frozen on the spot, time nothing in that moment— just silence.

“I shall return you to where I first appeared, your bedroom at Earl’s Court where this will play out as you intended. But remain cautious, Raffles, this kind of life invariably catches up with you and I cannot protect you forever. Death will come a calling.”

“I know, and I welcome it when it’s time.”

He stared at motionless Bunny for a few moments before I whisked him away from that sight, and instead we were now in his bedroom. I sat on the bed, tucking him in, watching as he slept in his drugged state, pale and clammy and unlike the magnificent A.J Raffles I was used to. “Sleep well. For tomorrow you wake.”

…

“Simon!” It was the booming voice of Anne-Marie calling me as I sat in the viewing room watching Raffles and Bunny at Ham Common with Raffles assuming his new identity as Ralph.

“What is it?” I yawned. After several hundred years I’d had enough.

“Where’s Raffles?” She tapped her foot.

“He’s quite alive, I’m afraid, your cricket team will have to wait.”

“Again? How is it possible to do it wrong twice?”

I yawned again. “It was not Raffles’ time to die. He was faking his death and I got the wrong end of the stick. He’s going to die one day so don’t worry.” I reclined on the chair and placed my arms behind my head. “Just got to wait. What else is there to do for eternity?”


	3. Chapter 3

I stood there, an angel against the backdrop of hell, only not hell in its literal sense but hell on earth with fire and flame, guns and bayonets, men screaming and crying— death all around and blood seeping through every bit of nature, trickling down the land like a gentle stream of not blue but red.

How my people in that heavenly place above could allow this to happen was something I couldn’t comprehend and I could’ve taken any of those poor souls to heaven with me for death was to claim many of them, and around me I saw other angels like me, watching and waiting like some morbid peeping Tom’s, waiting for their charge to die and accompany them on that long stairway to the sky. 

My assignment however had finally reached its last chapter. It was A.J Raffles’ time and there he was next to Bunny as he had been for the best days of his life. Bunny was drifting in and out of focus, deep with the pain of a war injury. But it wasn’t Bunny’s time to be taken and was not he I was to collect. It was just A.J Raffles. He had cheated death two times before but at last the day had arrived and heaven would be richer and the earth poorer.

I waved my cloak in the air and all the action stopped still like a photograph. The sound of deafening gunfire ceased and for a moment there was peace all around. I looked at the handsome face of A.J Raffles and he was looking back at me, his face dusty, his eyes lost with confusion. He was the only one awake and alert as though he were alive whilst the others lay dead but merely frozen in time.

“What happened?” he cried.

“They’re not dead, just stopped for a moment.”

“Why are you here?”

“Do you really need to ask, my friend?” I wiped a tear from my eye with my hand.

He nodded. “I see you’re dressed for the occasion.” He gave me the once over, glancing at my crimson cape and golden tunic with matching red tights.

“One never knows what to wear to war. It’s so sombre, so depressing, so full of blood which is notoriously difficult to remove from clothing. Naturally that’s why I chose red. That’s why they used to paint the floors red on ships, you know, to disguise the blood? Not that I’m expecting to be boarded but still.”

“So, it’s time then?” He bowed his head but there was the mature sound of acceptance in his tone. He sat there looking at Bunny and once again my heart went out to him. “Is it Bunny’s time too?” His natural concern was his companion and not himself and yet my superiors questioned his suitability for heaven.

“No, not his time.”

I’d been watching the two of them for years, had seen them volunteer and had seen Raffles dye his hair that ghastly shade of orange. I had seen them battle together over those months and I’d wanted to scream out and tell them that it all wasn’t worth it. No war in history had been worth it. But alas I wasn’t allowed, an angel was cursed, burdened to never intervene in the way they wanted. I’d broken the rules before and now I was destined to take Raffles to heaven as it was his time. It wasn’t a human’s choice. It was on the knees of the angels.

“It’s alright, Sir Simon, I expected you.”

“You’re surrendering as easily as that?”

“How long have I got?”

“A few minutes. Then I resume time.”

Raffles nodded. “Then I shall go out on a high, do it my own way.”

I shook my head. “Why is that so important?”

“Coming from the most dramatic fellow I’ve ever met!”

“So…I’ll see you in a few moments then?” I said, barely able to look him in the eye. I hated this part.

“Let me look upon Bunny for a moment and then you may do with me what you wish. Will Bunny be watched over?”

“Bunny will have his own angel when it’s his time.”

“I hope the angel is like you.”

I touched my heart. It felt wonderful.

Raffles stroked Bunny’s hair. “Bunny is an angel. No offence, Simon, but Bunny was always my guardian angel.”

I let out a high-pitched sob and pulled a handkerchief from my magnificent sleeves. “No offence taken. I can’t do this!”

“Do what?”

“Watch you die.”

“Then don’t. Leave Simon. Come back when it’s done. Come back when I lay still with no breath in my body, no beat in my heart, no warmth on my skin.”

I turned away. “Oh, there’s no point in getting poetic now! You’re worse than Bunny.” I folded my arms and stamped my foot into the dirt. “No, that’s it. I’ve quite made my mind up. Thou shall not die yet. I’m appealing.”

Raffles grinned. I dared not hope he was flirting with me for a moment. 

“Yes, you are appealing, Sir Simon, but how does that help me?”

I shook him away with a flourish of my hand. “No, you silly goose. I’m appealing the decision for us to take you so early to thy death.”

“You can do that?”

“I’m an angel with hundreds of years’ experience. Honestly how you insult me, Mr. Raffles. If I say I can appeal, then I can do so.”

I clicked my fingers and thankfully we were away from that horrid, burning, stinking place and instead on that tranquil stairway to heaven.

“What are we doing old chap?” Raffles said as he watched the angel band play their instruments on one of the clouds. “I expected harps.”

“Such a stereotype! What’s wrong, prey tell, with a recorder trio?”

Raffles held his hands over his ears. “Not very heavenly.”

“Alas the best musicians never made it up here.”

Suddenly there was a puff of smoke and then we stepped through onto heaven’s platform, slipping through a giant golden gateway to a glittering white expanse. We wiped the clouds from our hair and stood waiting as the formidable figure of Judge Winifred stood greeting us in her long white robes and white curly court wig. Heaven favoured the English traditions when it came to court apparel. Why, no one was certain, but there was something quite dramatic and alluring to that image of such authority.

She looked at me, her hair white and scraggily underneath the wig, her eyes glaring at me behind glasses. “Not you again, Simon de Winterbourne. And who is this?” she glanced over her spectacles. “Is it the cricketer finally?”

“Ah yes and no.”

“He plays cricket or he doesn’t play cricket? Our side is rather lacking in talent.”

“He plays for the other side,” I said.

Raffles stepped forward. “Your honour, I do rather resent being asked for me cricket like I’m a member of the staff under obligation.”

She looked at Raffles and then back at me. “So, is he Raffles or not?”

“Well, he is Raffles obviously, and he does play cricket when he wishes but he’s not quite dead yet. He’s here temporarily as it were, that is, I’m appealing.”

“Not from where I’m standing, you’re not.”

“No! Not me! I’m appealing the decision.”

“On what grounds?”

I let out another sob. “On the grounds of his love for Bunny. His love of beautiful things. The way he makes the world beautiful.”

She sighed. “Simon, how you wax poetically about another charge you’ve fallen in love with is no grounds for keeping someone alive.”

“I’m not in love with him, I’m in awe of him. Bunny is the one in love with him, oh do keep up, Judge!”

“Still not grounds for keeping him there.”

I folded my arms. “Well, it should be. What’s the point of a beautiful world if we take all the beautiful souls for ourselves?”

“For a beautiful eternal paradise?”

“Or to play cricket apparently,” Raffles muttered.

“And suddenly you don’t look so beautiful, sister!” I said to the Judge, wagging my finger at her.

I was about to say another word when she pointed at me and my lip suddenly had a button right in the middle. I tried to open it but it was purely for decoration like one of those stupid pockets for show and not for any real purpose. I tried to speak but alas my words were trapped in my mouth the way in life my controversial writings of verses to young men were hidden and kept away. 

“If I may on Sir Simon’s behalf,” Raffles said with a smile.

“I do wish you’d stop calling him that. He’s not a Sir, he’s a washed-up has-been playwright who uses Sir to pretend that he was higher that he was. His father was a butcher!” She pointed at me and undid the button on my lip, allowing me to defend myself.

I clutched my heart. “A butcher for the King!”

“Who got food poisoning!”

“That was never proved.”

“He’s a Sir to me,” Raffles said. 

I felt my heart skip a beat. No one had ever called me Sir just because I wanted them to. He would use the words I felt comfortable with to describe myself. What a gentleman.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine but you shall need to find someone to speak on your behalf, Raffles.”

I embraced her without thinking. “Oh, thank you, Winifred. I shall do you proud and when time comes to tell this tale, I shall sing your praises. I go forthwith to this deed.”

“We convene in one hour.”

“An hour?” Raffles was surprised. “The justice system is swift up here.”

I nodded. “Well time passes in rather a strange unworldly way. Sometimes an hour feels like millennia. Sometimes a century feels like a minute.”

Raffles gazed around in awe, watching as around him the vastness of the white became a courtroom with giant cloud desks and flocks of people seated ready for the proceedings to commence.

I pointed to myself. “I shall be your defence. I am honoured to serve the great A.J Raffles. The only other man I served, returned not in kind a service but instead a vile illness of boils and pustules, oozing from my flesh as children outside the window sang ‘ring a ring roses’ at me and the door was painted with a cross. The angel that came for me was not kind.”

Raffles placed his finger on my lip. “You might want to put all that plague stuff behind you, Sir Simon, it seems to torment you even in death. Forgive that man. I don’t think he intentionally wished to infect you.”

I sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But first things first, we’ll talk about me later. You need a character witness.”

“But I don’t know anyone up here.”

“It can be someone from Earth. Bunny will be your best bet, not only because everyone else thinks you’re dead, but they’re likely to listen to anyone who looks like an innocent angel himself.”

“Bunny’s solid worth but he’s not so perfect. He can be temperamental, emotional, jealous and easily-led. He may crack under the pressure.”

“But he’s your rabbit. He knows you better than anyone else in all of heaven and Earth. He’s there when you may die and he’s been there through every fake death and resurrection and all the important moments of your life. He’s the best choice because he is part of you, the good and the bad.”

“Sir Simon, that was superlative.”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I’m a playwright, poet and scholar. Good grief people underestimate me. I shall summon Bunny to join thee.”

“But he’s in the middle of a war?”

“Yes, talk about a bore war. Raffles you’re thinking in earthly terms. We’re going to steal him the way you steal diamonds and rubies. You steal from something called a safe but I am going to pluck from somewhere quite dangerous. Time will be still and with a snap of my manicured fingers, poor injured Bunny will rise from the ashes like a phoenix and join us in this heavenly plain, albeit temporarily.”

I whipped my cloak over my shoulder and suddenly, there emerged Bunny through the mist, walking towards us with rosy cheeks, clean and tidy and wearing a suit as though he hadn’t been wearing an army uniform at all.

“Why is he dressed so elegantly?” Raffles said. “And I greet him dressed like this as a tired and weary soldier?”

“Oh, I do apologise.” I snapped my fingers and there he also stood in a heavenly white suit to match his heavenly white teeth.

And they stood looking at each other, gazing as though they hadn’t seen one another for years.

“Does he know what’s going on?”

I blew gently into Bunny’s ear and suddenly all the knowledge of everything that had transpired filled his head. “He won’t remember it when it’s over but for now he is in the loop.”

“A.J!” Bunny said. “Don’t worry, I’ll stand up for you. I’ll get you out of this.”

Raffles laughed. “Thank you, Bunny.”

“Sorry to break the romantic tension,” I said, my heart aflutter. “But we shall be beginning shortly. I can see the prosecution approaching. Bunny, take your place on the stand if you will.”

The prosecution lawyer of sorts was an angel like myself and stood before me majestically. He was dressed in similar clothes to mine but where my hair was fair his was dark and he had a dark moustache.

“I am Ferdinand Marquez,” he said. 

I blushed. “I am Sir Simon de Winterbourne.”

He was a beautiful Spaniard. And I a pale Englishman and our kind were sworn enemies in our day, always at war, the same as Raffles and Bunny and those Boars or whoever else was fighting whoever else in that time period.

I bowed before him. “I accept you as prosecution and hope any bad blood between us will not affect the outcome.”

“I can assure you I am professional. Unless you wish to send an Armada,” he winked.

“Oh, I say, I wish I could sail to you, I mean, shall we commence? Commence the court!” I ignored the grins from Raffles and Bunny, but when one has been surrounded for many years with unattractive angels, one does crave one of the beautiful kind. 

Before I had time to think, Judge Winifred called places and there Ferdinand and I were on opposite podiums and where Raffles stood in the dock and Bunny in the witness stand. 

“Bunny?” Judge Winifred said. “Is that your real name?”

“Oh, no, it’s Harry Manders,” he said shyly, still overwhelmed by his surroundings.

“Well then, Mr. Harry Manders. Please tell the court why your Mr. Raffles should be allowed to leave our paradise and resume life on Earth?”

Looking across at the sea of faces, Bunny gulped. “Well…”

“Speak up!” Judge Winifred bawled. 

“It’s not that Raffles should get special treatment. But I feel I should speak of him as he is. Raffles has often accused me of over-embellishing the way I see him but I don’t feel that is fair because all those things I say are true. It doesn’t mean he’s good through and through or that he’s perfect but he’s mine. I’d like you to give him another chance. He’s a good man really, though you probably only want to look at him as a thief.”

There was a succession of gasps from the jury and crowd. 

Winifred peered over her spectacles. “Are you telling me, Mr. Rabbit, that you’re admitting he’s a thief? There were rumours of his misdeeds but to hear it so plainly from his character witness.”

Bunny looked glumly at Raffles. “But it’s a court of law and I’m sworn to tell the truth.”

“If I may speak,” I added to which the Judge nodded. “I would say here it’s less about the truth and what we all want to hear and more about feelings. We want to feel as though Raffles deserves his place on Earth as though it’d be better there with him, with you and your love.”

“But I can’t swear to it being better for the world, only for me. In which case I’m being selfish. I can swear that a world with Raffles in it is infinitely better for me.”

“So why should we grant him more years?” The Judge said.

“I don’t know.”

I placed my head in my hands. “Because, Bunny,” I said, “because he is a human being, warts and all. Because you love him and deserve more time together. Because he’s far too young.”

Ferdinand stepped forward. “So are many taken from the Earth. I was only thirty-eight and you Sir Simon, only thirty-two.”

“I made the initial mistake. He should never have seen me and thanks to me, it’s all mixed up. Who knows what his real death date should be? Why take him when we don’t have to? Why not just this once, due to my error, let him live?”

But it was not to be. And the stubborn Judge and jury decided that Raffles had had enough chances and that he should die on that battlefield in South Africa like so many men around him. Bunny let out a sob, I let out a sob, even Ferdinand shed a single tear and yet Raffles stood there so calmly, so peacefully, accepting his fate as though he were an angel already. 

“I understand,” Raffles said, “it’s alright, Simon, Bunny. Why should I live when so many better people than me die every day?”

“Oh no need to find your morals now,” I snapped. I was so infuriated.

Bunny bowed his head. “I should have done better.”

Raffles’ hand touched Bunny’s shoulder. “No, Bunny, you did what you had to.”

“I would take your place if I could, A.J.”

“I would never allow that,” Raffles said. “Come on, Bunny. Remember what I told you, be brave. Victory or Wormwood Scrubs or heaven or hell? We know one day we shall be reunited in heaven.”

“Come on, you two, it’s time,” I said sadly.

Raffles shook my hand. “’til we meet again, Sir Simon.”

And with a flutter of white dust, the tranquillity and the whiteness of heaven was replaced with the harshness of the earth where war raged on and Raffles and Bunny returned to where they had been before I had arrived. 

My heart beat quickened as I waited for it, as I waited for the end. “It’s not only been the best time I’ve ever had, old Bunny, but I’m not half sure—” I heard him say as I unfroze time and then I gulped and I drew back my bow and arrow and I shot a magical dart that stopped Raffles in his tracks where not another word drew from his lips.

I’d killed him you asked? No, not I. I saved him. Oh, I couldn’t abide by rules that made little sense to me. Raffles accepted the end. The other times he pushed against it and asked me to return later, always later, but now he resigned himself to the end, and it was I, Sir Simon de Winterbourne who was unable to let him go. And so, I didn’t. I simply made him deeply sleep where he would dream away and when Bunny woke, his Raffles would be seemingly gone. Bunny would think he was no more, heaven would think what they wanted, and I would take him to an unknown place in the world and leave him there— confused and dazed, fighting to find his way back to his Bunny. I couldn’t make it easy of course, that wasn’t in my style, but I could make him live and realise that his life on earth was not for jewels and honour or glory but for something far more precious— his beloved Rabbit. Finding inspiration from a certain someone, I dropped him down in Spain.

…

My head was still in a daze when I found my body arriving back at my Angel Halls of Residence and I glanced in the mirror, realising I must have transported myself back without even realising it. I didn’t know what was going to face me when the superiors found out, whether I’d be punished or thrown downward into purgatory for thousands of years to repent but I knew wrong or right in technical terms I’d made the right decision. 

In the mirror my pale face seemed so dreary and I looked tired. 

“Sir Simon?” 

I spun around and there standing in the doorway was the tall heroic figure of Ferdinand.

“What are you doing here? You won the case, I lost. I always lose.”

“It’s not a fight. And I’m not here to gloat. I wanted to say that I know.”

“Know what?”

“That you took that matter into your own hands, that you let him live against the wishes of the court.”

“I’m my own angel. You’re going to tell?”

He shook his head. “I think what you did was noble. I’m impressed.”

I was speechless and I blushed profusely. 

“Don’t look so surprised. And just so you know, I’ve let someone live too,” Ferdinand said.

“You have?”

“He was handsome as well. He loved a woman so deeply that I couldn’t bear to separate them. And if the only reason they wanted Raffles here was for cricket then they deserve to be deceived.”

“Ferdinand?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t suppose you want to watch a boxset? I’ve got seasons 1-90 of Raffles’ life?”

“90?”

“Yes, I really think everyone should live to ninety don’t you, none of all this faffing about! But just one question?”

“What’s that?”

“Does my dying of the plague bother you?”

“Of course not, why would it?”

I’d found the perfect angel at last! Was he the Bunny to my Raffles? I only had eternity to find out!


End file.
